“Ya Ullah, she gets more beautiful every day.” Shehab waved at Mennah, who tried to reach him by pawing the screen, before starting to bang on it in chagrin when she couldn’t. He laughed as Farooq pulled her back, telling her in both Arabic and English why she couldn’t reach her uncle. Farooq insisted he’d never talk down to her, that she was brilliant and would learn as much as they let her and it was never too soon to start. Shehab happened to agree with his methods. He sighed as Farooq distracted Mennah. “Where’s Carmen? And how is she?”

At the mention of his wife, Farooq’s eyes kindled with the heat of love and lust, the warmth of pride and trust. “She’s taking a shower. And she’s magnificent.”

“She’s out of the shower. And look who’s talking.”

Kamal gave a rough exhalation of impatience as Carmen appeared behind Farooq, taking both him and her daughter in an exuberant hug before looking at Shehab. She did look well. She was a lovely woman, but now she truly glowed with the overpowering beauty only absolute love and happiness could generate. He was happy that Farooq, who’d always carried the weight of the world on his shoulders, had found the one woman who’d love him as endlessly and unconditionally as Carmen loved him. No wonder Farooq had so easily given up the throne for her.

He watched Farooq and Carmen share a kiss that for all its lightness and brevity told volumes about the depth of their relationship, in and out of bed. He knew the signs now. What a fleeting look, even the least gesture or nongesture could convey. For he shared it all with Farah.

Carmen took Mennah from Farooq, smiled at him and Kamal. “It’s great to see you again even if on a screen. Now, say bye, Mennah. Your father and uncles have important stuff to discuss.”

Mennah let out a loud, protesting “aab.”

“She’s trying to say my name!” Shehab exclaimed.

“Of course.” Farooq grinned his elation, before turning to Carmen to share their special smile. “She’s a prodigy.”

Shehab laughed at Mennah’s continuing efforts to throw herself at the screen. “I promise I will soon come to you and we can play catch-you all day long.”

As soon as Carmen and Mennah disappeared, Kamal grated, “It’s so heartwarming to see you both enjoying your family life when our whole region is on the brink of widespread civil war.”

Farooq glared at Kamal’s screen, then exhaled and turned to Shehab. “It’s true, regretfully. The Aal Shalaans are getting restless again. They’re demanding proof that King Atef’s daughter will marry you, that we aren’t only pacifying them until we find a way to cheat them out of having their lineage introduced into our royal family. They gave us two more weeks, threatening extreme action afterward. I don’t know what’s been going on on your end, and I don’t want to know. But you now need to give us an answer. Will she marry you, or won’t she?”

Shehab closed his eyes. So the time had come. He had to ask her. And she was indeed ripe to say yes to anything he asked.

She’d been that for weeks now. But he’d felt that, as soon as he asked her, he’d be counting down to the moment she’d find out the truth. He hadn’t been able to face the possibilities.

So he’d shut out the world, had taken all he could with her while he could.

Now the world had come crashing back on him and he had to brace himself for its weight, its reality. Its inescapability.

Feeling bile fill him to his eyes, he ground out, “She will marry me.”

Nine

He reentered his quarters, theirs now, covering the long distance to their bed slowly, to savor the image she made, naked and tangled in the sheets, one breast jutting out, nipple still erect, just because he was there, existed, her thighs pressed together on the ache of satiation and the renewed need he knew must be gathering in her body as it was in his.

He stood over her and she opened her eyes, the look of total desire and delight there skewering through him as she held up her arms, spreading herself for his ownership.

He surrendered, filled her arms with a pained groan. She rained kisses over his face, his neck, his shoulders and he shuddered, drew back. The hungry, playful look in her eyes gradually turned uncertain, then anxious.

“What is it, darling?” She came up on one elbow, a quiver that thrummed in his heart permeating her voice. “Is something wrong with your family?”

He squeezed her shoulders, forgetting anything but what had churned inside him like slow poison since he’d laid eyes on her, the one thing he had no answer for. The one thing he needed answered. Now. “Only one thing is wrong. One thing I need to know. When you leave here, will you go back to your lover?”

She fell back on the bed as if he’d backhanded her.

“H-how did…?” She gulped, squeezed her eyes shut, her color rising until she almost glowed in the dimness. At last she opened her stricken eyes. “W-was that what this phone call was about? You’ve investigated me?”

“Did I need to investigate you, Farah? After all the things we shared, you couldn’t have told me yourself?”

She scrambled up to her knees, her eyes filling, with tears and beseeching. “I should have, but I couldn’t. I was so thankful you hadn’t heard the rumors…”

“Rumors? Are you telling me Bill Hanson isn’t your lover?”

“Oh, God, no. He’s the only one of Dad’s acquaintances who stood beside us when Dad died and all our assets were lost. He offered to give us whatever we needed to regain them. But my mother admitted her lack of business acumen was what led to our losing Dad’s fortune in the first place, and that she’d only lose whatever Bill gave us again. I was too young to take over and soon realized that I wasn’t cut out to be the CEO of a multinational corporation. So I asked him for a job instead. He offered me one at a huge salary, and I worked my tail off to earn every cent. He soon promoted me to his personal advisor and analyst. When I accused him of being charitable again, he insisted I was the best person for the job, having been taught by Dad, who was the best, not to mention that he trusted me implicitly, something he couldn’t buy with all his money.

“The rumors started the day he promoted me almost two and a half years ago, and Bill asked me to let people think they were true, said it was a mutually beneficial arrangement. I wanted to keep suitors away, and he wanted revenge on his wife, who’d left him for a man their youngest son’s age. I was content with the arrangement until I met you, and I was so happy you hadn’t heard about it as I just wasn’t up to explaining, was even afraid you might not believe me.”

She fell silent, out of breath, her eyes seeking his reaction anxiously. He doubted he had any outward reaction. He felt as if he’d turned to stone.

After he’d become certain she hadn’t been sexually active, his mind had taken off on ugly tangents to explain how a woman could manipulate a man like Hanson without using her body.

But he’d dismissed each explanation as impossible. Not her. Not Farah. And now this. This demolished every doubt. Made her a total innocent. Made his deception infinitely worse.

For he believed her. Without question. She was only telling him what his every instinct had been telling him from the first moment. She didn’t have one exploitative cell in her body.

But there was one thing. He grabbed at it to yank him out of the mire of realizations and guilt. “Why didn’t you want suitors, a woman of your youth and beauty?”

“Suitors was the term Bill used. Mine is predators. I’ve had them circling since Dad died, first for my inheritance and then since I became Bill’s right hand, because of my position.”

“That’s why you…?” He choked on his question, memories bombarding him.

“Why I accused you of having some sort of agenda the night we met? Yeah, my insecurity reared its ugly head. I was so stupid, it even crossed my mind that you might have something in common with those petty men who wanted a piece of Bill.”

“But surely you realize that you, alone, without any other incentive, are enough to drive men wild?”

She gave him an incredulous look. “Yeah, right.”

“How can you even doubt it? Don’t you see what you do to me? What you did to me since that first look?”

“I think it’s a miracle, that you want me as much as I want you. But before you, I didn’t care if there were men who might want me for myself. I never wanted a lover again, after my one experience left me convinced I was incapable of enjoying sex.”

One experience. So she’d been as inexperienced as he’d felt. Her first real intimacies, her first pleasures, her first abandon had been in his arms.

But the elation of this confirmation was dampened by everything else. The expanding knowledge of how much his initial preconceptions-no matter that they’d been backed up by photographic evidence-had caused him to misjudge her. They’d polluted his thoughts and feelings, kept him resisting logic and the evidence of his own senses and intruded upon the precious moments with her, moments he hadn’t fully appreciated, believing what he had about her. And now this. And he had to know the rest, everything. Struggling with a dozen reactions, he said, “Tell me about this experience that led you to believe such a ludicrous thing about yourself.”

She looked as if she’d rather dig a hole and hide.

Just as he was about to tell her she shouldn’t recount it if it upset her at all, she squared her shoulders, gave him such an adorable look of embarrassment and determination.

“I was nineteen and I was still trying to cope with losing Dad, with being the strong one for my mother’s sake. Dan was one of Dad’s executives and he kept working on convincing me that I needed someone, that that someone was him. His research of me was so thorough he knew what to do, what to say, to project the image of a soulmate for the embarrassingly green girl I was. But then, as a shrewd businessman, he would have sunk that much time and effort into far less than the half-billion-dollar deal I still was at the time. He was ready to do anything to land me. Then he did, and it was-” she winced, the perfection of her lightly tanned skin turning coppery with embarrassment “-horrible. It wasn’t even painful, for he was-uh…” She put two fingers about four inches apart, turning positively red. “Anyway, it was just awkward and gross. And he told me it was OK, that some women aren’t capable of enjoying sex, but he would keep trying to-to…”